In the space of just a few years, the Internet because it provides access to information, and the ability to publish information, in revolutionary ways—has emerged from relative obscurity to international prominence. Whereas in general an internet is a network of networks, the Internet is a global collection of interconnected local, mid-level, and wide-area networks that use the Internet Protocol (IP) as the network layer protocol. Whereas the Internet embraces many local- and wide-area networks, a given local- or wide-area network may or may not form part of the Internet.
As the Internet and its underlying technologies have become increasingly familiar, attention has become focused on Internet security and computer network security in general. With unprecedented access to information has also come unprecedented opportunities to gain unauthorized access to data, change data, destroy data, make unauthorized use of computer resources, interfere with the intended use of computer resources, etc. As experience has shown, the frontier of cyberspace has its share of scofflaws, resulting in increased efforts to protect the data, resources, and reputations of those embracing intranets and the Internet.
Firewalls are intended to shield data and resources from the potential ravages of computer network intruders. In essence, a firewall functions as a mechanism which monitors and controls the flow of data between two networks, or a network and a device. All communications, e.g., data packets, which flow between the networks in either direction must pass through the firewall; otherwise, security is circumvented. The firewall selectively permits the communications to pass from one network to another network or device, to provide bi-directional security.
Recently, there has been much work on software applications referred to as “personal firewalls.” These applications are typically installed on a computer or any other computing device for protecting against unsecured networks coupled thereto. During use of such personal firewalls, network traffic is monitored and filtered based on a predetermined set of rules. Such rules may include any filtering criteria that protect the device. For example, such criteria may result in the prevention of computers having certain IP addresses from accessing the protected device, precluding access to certain ports associated with the protected device, the prevention of certain applications accessing the protected device, etc. During use, a vast number of events may occur where network traffic is prevented based on the filtering criteria.
Often, a user may wish to monitor the events to assess the current state of security of the device for the purposes of modifying the filtering criteria in the foregoing manner. Often information of interest when analyzing such events includes a source of an attempt to access the protected device, and the network segments that were traversed to access the protected device. Unfortunately, typical personal firewalls merely list IP address associated with the source of the attempts and possibly names of network segments. This alphanumeric listing approach is cumbersome and fails to convey the information of interest intuitively.
There is thus a need for an interface system and method capable of effectively conveying information associated with firewall events.